Arianna Huffington: 'The third revolution is to change the world that men have designed'

Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of the online newspaper 'The Huffington
Post', didn’t get where she is by taking it easy. So why is she now
advocating a new age of wellbeing and relaxation?

Arianna Huffington at her house in Los Angeles
Photo: AMY ELKINS

By Lucy Broadbent

12:00PM BST 29 Jul 2013

Arianna Huffington is warm, motherly, convivial. Given her reputation as a ruthless opportunist, frequently described as 'the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus’, this is something of a shock.

Forbesranks her among the world’s most powerful women. After she revolutionised news in 2005 with the first online newspaper, The Huffington Post – later selling it to AOL for $315 million (£200 million) while remaining editor-in-chief – it’s easy to see why.

Born in Greece, educated at Cambridge and a bestselling author of 12 books, she’s also intellectually agile enough to run rings around most in the political debates of American television and radio of which she’s fond.

And yet here she is serving watermelon juice and figs in her Los Angeles home. 'Intimidating? Me? Oh, come on,’ she says, with a laugh, and settles on a velvet sofa, from where she wants to discuss her latest venture: the 'third women’s revolution’.

Now 63, Huffington has been a campaigner in one way or another for most of her life – in her home are no fewer than three photos of her with the Obamas.

And as she talks, earnestly and passionately, the name of another ancient Greek comes to mind, far superior to overweening Icarus. How about Athena, the goddess of wisdom, courage and inspiration?

'The current model of success, in which we drive ourselves into the ground, and in which working to the point of exhaustion and burnout is a badge of honour, was created by men,’ says Huffington in her thick Greek accent.

'It’s a model of success that’s not working for women, and it’s not working for men, either. Our workplaces are fuelled by sleep deprivation.’

Huffington’s crusade on the subject brings her to London on Tuesday, where she will host a conference entitled 'The Third Metric: Redefining Success Beyond Money and Power’.

The term 'success’, she believes, should include the values of wellbeing, wisdom and kindness. Go-getters, she hopes, will become 'go-givers’.

With her now ex-husband, Michael Huffington, in 1987

Many might scoff at the warm, fuzzy nature of such a message. But the movement is gathering momentum. The Third Metric has its own special corner on The Huffington Post and gets millions of hits each month; and so successful was Arianna’s first meeting to promote it in New York earlier this year that she is expanding to Britain.

Changing attitudes, away from the macho culture of stress, is Huffington’s mission. And she sees women leading the charge because, by coming later into the boardrooms of business, women have the clarity of vision to see them for what they are.

'The first revolution was women getting the vote, the second was getting an equal place at every level of society…’ she continues, adding that this revolution is still unfinished.

'The third revolution is changing the world that men have designed. It’s not sustainable. Sustainability is not just about the environment, it’s personal sustainability.

'Ironically, when we succeed at making these changes, not only are we going to have a lot of grateful men because they are paying too heavy a price, but we’re going to have a lot more women at the top. Many women currently leave the workplace because they don’t want to pay the price.’

The Third Metric bounced into life at the same time Huffington’s own head bounced on to her desk while fainting from exhaustion in 2007 and breaking a cheekbone.

She had been working around the clock to build The Huffington Post, at the same time as looking at colleges with her eldest daughter.

'When I look back, it really was an incredible gift because who knows what would have happened to me if I had not course-corrected and learnt to prioritise sleep? It also sensitised me to what was happening all around me in the workplace – heart attacks, high blood pressure, diabetes.’

Huffington, who is renowned for being well connected, began to talk to others. 'Now, I always interrupt people when they praise an employee for working 24/7.

I say, “Well, this is very unfortunate. If they are working 24/7, then they can’t be any good. Because nobody can be any good working 24/7.”

There is this macho thing where men compete with each other about how early they get up. To be a man, you’ve got to be up at five and have made four conference calls to Europe and taken a breakfast meeting before 8am. But the bottom line that matters is how present you are in what you are doing.

If you are at your desk at 7am, but only 65 per cent of you is present, it’s better to be at your desk at 9am, and have 100 per cent of you there, because you’ve had a good night’s rest.’

She cites the dangers if society doesn’t change – not only in terms of health-care costs, but also the way decisions are being made.

'We have a lot of leaders with high IQs in politics, business and the media making terrible decisions. This is not because they are not smart, but because they are disconnected from their own wisdom and best judgment. They are too stressed and tired.’

Huffington with Michelle and Barack Obama

Huffington’s flowery jacket and black trousers are what you might expect of a powerhouse who is proud of her sex: businesslike but feminine. And her complexion is everything you’d expect of someone who’s evangelical about sleep.

After reprioritising her own life so that it included more sleep, plus exercise, meditation and yoga, she began reprioritising the lives of her 850 employees. She installed beds and sleep pods in the New York offices of The Huffington Post.

'At first, people were nervous to use them, but now they are booked solidly.’ Weekly meditation and yoga classes were also introduced, and instructions sent out that any work-related emails sent out of hours were not expected to be replied to.

'We have a phrase at The Huffington Post: “Unplug and recharge.” In just the same way we must plug in our devices to recharge them, we need to unplug ourselves in order to recharge.’

Her next step was to take the movement global. But, Huffington points out, this was already under way.

'We have an editor whose job is to send us everything that is being written on this subject on the web, and it’s amazing what is already out there. We’re just connecting up the dots.’

Is there a danger that if women spearhead such a movement they will be seen as weak? 'Of course not,’ dismisses Huffington.

'People are already seeing the benefits. Some are seeing the personal benefits, others are seeing the benefits to the bottom line: 25 per cent of corporate America is already offering employees some form of mindfulness training.’

Huffington is keen that women should help other women in this cause. 'I agree with Madeleine Albright [the first female US Secretary of State] that there is a special place reserved in Hell for the women who don’t help other women,’ she says.

But she also says that there are many men who are on board too. At the New York meeting, held in Huffington’s apartment, with 340 attendees, there was a panel entitled 'The Men Who Get It’.

Huffington’s Los Angeles home is comfortable and large, though not extravagant by local standards. There is a pool, serious art on her walls, including a painting by Françoise Gilot, and a proliferation of framed photographs.

These are more revealing than any of the chintzy furnishings because they collectively tell the story of her life, a rags-to-riches tale, if ever there was one.

She grew up in Athens. Her father was a Greek journalist who, as Huffington has said, 'would start newspapers, most of which did not succeed’. He was also a serial philanderer, and her mother, Elli, left him, taking their two daughters with her, when Huffington was 11.

'She had no means of support and sold everything she had,’ recalls Huffington. 'I recall her selling her last gold earrings. But she was insistent on a good education.’

So when Huffington saw a picture of Cambridge in a magazine, and announced she wanted to go there, her mother simply said, 'Let’s see how we can get you there.’ Huffington (née Stassinopoulos) didn’t even speak English at the time.

With her daughters in 1992

Recalling her mother, who died 13 years ago, brings tears to her eyes. She was a role model to Arianna and her younger sister Agapi, who now lives with her. 'My mother believed you could overcome any obstacle,’ she says. 'She’d say, “There are no failures, only stepping stones to success.”’

Huffington has always had a lot to say. At Cambridge, she became the first foreign and third female President of the Cambridge Union. And with female empowerment firmly in mind thanks to her mother, she wrote her first bestseller, The Female Woman, at the age of 23.

It was a swipe at Germaine Greer and the feminists of the 1970s who criticised women for choosing to be wives and mothers. 'If a woman wants to stay home and take care of her children, why shouldn’t we respect that as much as the woman who wants to be a CEO?’

More books followed, and a decade-long love affair with the columnist and broadcaster Bernard Levin. She broke up with him because he refused to marry her. 'I might still be in London if he’d married me,’ she says.

After moving to America, she married the wealthy Republican Michael Huffington, with whom she had two daughters, Christina, now 24, and Isabella, 22, and entered the public eye as a conservative campaigner.

Remarkably, after their divorce in 1997, Arianna switched political allegiance, even running against Arnold Schwarzenegger as an independent in the 2003 race to be the Governor of California.

'I believe it’s our responsibility as thinking beings to change our thinking and evolve when we come across new facts,’ she explains. 'I was always pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, but I felt the private sector would solve a lot of our social problems. Then I saw first hand that you need the raw power of government. That was why I switched.’

It was while she was still nursing her wounds from losing to Schwarzenegger that she persuaded a group of wealthy investors to bankroll The Huffington Post. With its centrist and liberal views, its launch in 2005 cannily exploited the growing disenchantment with the presidency of George W Bush.

Building The Huffington Post was the proudest moment of her career, she says. Not that it’s over. Retirement, like marrying again, is not something she’s considering. 'We have had 260 million comments since we launched,’ she says, smiling.

'And now it’s fantastic to be owned by AOL because it’s given us so many resources that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. We now have international editions and none of that would have happened so fast if we hadn’t done the acquisition.’

She pauses, deep in thought. 'But that’s a career success. Definitely my greatest life success is my two daughters. One of them is living in London at the moment, the other in New York. There is nobody I’d rather have dinner with. Wherever they are, I feel an incredible closeness with them.’

And so the conversation returns full circle to the importance of female unanimity. She refers to her girls, including her sister, as her 'tribe’. And right on cue, there’s a buzz on her BlackBerry from one of her daughters.